


Frogs

by Flufferdoodle



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pokemon, Alternate Universe - Zookeeper, Because I am a disaster, But there's frogs, Frog fic, Frogs, M/M, This fic says a lot and goes absolutely nowhere with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25743040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flufferdoodle/pseuds/Flufferdoodle
Summary: Red likes frogs and Blue likes Red.
Relationships: Ookido Green | Blue Oak & Ookido Yukinari-hakase | Professor Samuel Oak, Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Red, Red & Red's Mom (Pokemon)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	Frogs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lokesurie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokesurie/gifts).



> fun fact i like frogs and then lokesurie was like "write a frog fic" and so i wrote a frog fic
> 
> it's about literally fucking nothing but it's here

“Red, that’s lovely honey, but maybe you should leave the frog outside, where he belongs, okay?” Red’s mom said. She knelt on the floor before her son, apron piling on the tile floor, as he proudly held out a large bullfrog. Its flabby body filled his small hands, and she faintly wondered how he managed to catch it.

Red frowned, displeased with her verdict, and pulled the frog back close to his chest. Its body inflated, but it remained quiet as tears welled up in his eyes.

“He’s mine,” Red said quietly.

“No, baby, he’s nobody’s. He’s your friend, sure, but he belongs out in nature.” She smiled reassuringly at her son. “You wouldn’t want him getting lonely here, would you? He’s probably got a whole life outside. And once you let him go, he might tell stories about you to all his froggy friends.”

The frog hopped onto Red’s shoulder, expression blank. Red reached up and gently stroked its back.

“What if he forgets me?”

“Frog-gets you?” Red’s mom joked, reaching her hand out. “I don’t think he will. You’re a very memorable boy, Red.” She placed her fingers gently under Red’s chin, lifting his head up ever so slightly. “He’ll have a lot better stories to tell about the boy who brought him inside and showed him a house than the boy who kept him imprisoned. It looks like he likes you, too. You could stay friends, right?”

“But what if he leaves?”

“Well, that’s just how things go sometimes,” she said, “and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. But he won’t ever forget you, so long as you don’t forget him.”

Red’s fists clenched against his sides, but he held his head up as his mom pulled her hand away.

“Will you let him go?” she asked.

“…”

“If you do, I can show you something special.”

Red seemed to think for a moment before abruptly walking outside. When he returned, the frog was gone, and tear tracks stained his cheeks. His mom gave him an extra scoop of ice cream after dinner, and they cuddled together while they watched a documentary on reptiles and amphibians.

The next night, she dressed him in his rain jacket and doused him with bug spray, and they drove an hour and a half out to the nearby pond. Red’s dad had once said he would teach Red how to fish there, and the memory still haunted his mom, but tonight was clear and beautiful. The half-moon reflected against the green-blue water, the cattails and loosestrife swayed, gently silhouetted. A red-winged blackbird cawed somewhere across the pond, the only other sound aside from the chorus of frogs.

Red’s eyes widened in wonder as they stepped out of the car, and he tripped as he ran down to the dock. The wood had rotted away over the years, stained green with moss and algae, but it could support Red’s weight as he stared out across the pond.

“Do you think they’re talking about me?” he asked.

“They must be,” she said, “as I can’t think of anything else that would call for voices so beautiful.”

Red stuck his tongue out. “Sappy.”

She smiled.

The next week, when they stopped by the library for Red to drop off his weekly stack of books, he stormed straight past the children’s fiction into the nonfiction, piling on every book he could find on frogs into his tiny arms.

The next month, they threw a frog-themed birthday party.

“Leaf’s been on a snake bend recently,” Leaf’s mom told her as their children wrestled outside. “Two of a kind, aren’t they?”

**-line break-**

Growing up, Blue enjoyed the frequent trips to his grandfather’s zoo. He enjoyed feeding the giraffes and holding the spiders, enjoyed riding on the safari cars through the Australia and Africa zones. He loved the budgie house, and had tried to name the dozens of brightly colored parrots as a child. The zoo was his life just as much as it was his grandfather’s, and his chest hurt with nostalgia on each of his now-occasional visits.

He wasn’t too far, now, just living in the city up north where he worked at a biochem lab, but the three hour drive deterred from stopping by too often. It wasn’t like he and his grandfather particularly went out of their way to see each other, either, and people tended to give odd looks to a young man prowling the zoo alone.

But today was a beautiful day, his date had ghosted him, and the zoo was just half an hour from where they were supposed to meet. So he sent his grandfather a quick text and found himself in the little office, crammed at the top floor of the zoo’s admin building, for the first time in almost a year.

Gramps uncrossed his arms as Blue walked in, stern face softening a little bit.

“It’s been a while,” he said.

Blue nodded. “Hadn’t heard from you in a while, Gramps, had to make sure you’re still alive.”

“I’ve got plenty of life left in me still, unfortunately for you.’

Blue rolled his eyes as he swept the folders crowding the chair in the corner. He plopped down with little grace and put his feet up on the filing cabinet. He could see his grandfather’s eye twitch, but he refrained from saying anything.

They’d had those conversations a million times in a million ways about a million different things. They were trying, somewhat successfully, to move on.

“How’s the zoo?” Blue asked.

“Good as ever. Hired on a couple interns full-time last year; a pair from around here. Agatha retired.”

“That’s a surprise. I thought she’d hang around until she died, really.”

Gramps shot him a sharp look. “You should speak more kindly of these people.”

“What I said wasn’t necessarily unkind,” Blue argued. “She just really… I can’t picture her retired, really. Kinda like you.”

Gramps sighed. “I suppose. Lance has been slipping retirement paperwork under my door now for the past month. I’m just not sure what I’d do with myself without my work.”

Blue shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said carefully, “I’d have something else to look forward if you or your sister had some great-grandkids.”

Blue choked on his own spit, and almost fell as he quickly rose to his feet, coughing. “I’m sorry?”

Gramps shrugged innocently, turning back to his desk. “Just a thought.”

“Dude, you already have grandkids. Are you serious?”

“I had your mother very young, and she had you and Daisy even younger,” he pointed out. “I’ve got some life left in me still.”

Blue had a lot of things he could say to that, about how he and Daisy hadn’t even been wanted, about how he had no right to demand _more_ children into the family, about how Blue couldn’t imagine him welcoming his role as a great-grandfather seeing as he couldn’t even handle his job as grandfather, and Blue suspected he hadn’t been particularly present as a father, either.

Blue could say those things, pick a fight, and storm out now, and wake up to four missed calls from Daisy and another forced counselling session.

But Gramps looked genuine and fragile. He lost a lot in life, had done his best with what he had. Raising a young girl alone through college and fucking it up enough that she ran away from home just to return pregnant, rinse and repeat, and die in labor, and then be left alone with two young children all over again was no easy task. Blue had learned to accept that.

As much as the nights alone with nothing but a book and the TV stung, he knew that his grandfather loved him. That he did the best he could. That being an adult was impossibly difficult, and it was nothing short of a miracle that the three of their lives – Gramps’s, Daisy’s, and Blue’s – turned out so well today.

So he sat back down, closed his eyes, and counted to ten.

Gramps looked worried as he took a deep breath and returned to the conversation.

“Gramps, I’m like, twenty two. I don’t even have a girlfriend. I might not even date a woman.”

“You can always adopt.”

“I- Gramps, no. No. Go bug Daisy about this. Seriously.”

“Did I tell you the new hires are about your age?”

“Jesus, Gramps. Okay, you know what? I’m leaving. I’m going to go see Susan. Bye.”

“Head over to the grill in an hour and I’ll introduce you!”

Blue let the door slam on his way out, and he made his way down to the giraffe enclosure. His feet knew the way, same as always, though he paused to marvel at some of the updated signs and scenery. New exhibit construction had begun just down the hill in the recently purchased plot of land, and Blue wondered how the zoo would look in another decade.

Susan waited right near the lookout deck, same as always, tongue sticking out to swipe lettuce from visitors’ hands. She was the fattest giraffe, by far, her bulky body still shining in good health. As soon as she spotted Blue, she lumbered over, years of experience teaching her that he always had the best treats.

And he’d come prepared, of course, grabbing the bag of crackers as he walked out of the admin building. He handed her one, and her rough tongue scraped against his fingers as she reached out to grab it. Blue brushed his hand against her snout, feeling the familiar bumpy texture under his fingertips. She lowered her head, nosing toward the bag, and he relented and handed her one more. He’d get an earful from his grandfather later about giraffe feeding and the importance of monitoring their diets, but two crackers wouldn’t hurt to keep his reputation with her intact.

Really, who needed a relationship when you had a giraffe who used you for food?

Susan licked at Blue’s hair once she realized he wouldn’t give her anything more, and then made her way back to the crowds of children and parents. Blue shoved the bag of crackers half in his pocket and took his time wandering through the rest of his childhood world.

By the time he reached the Grizzly Grill, his grandfather had already grabbed a table in the corner, a young man and woman in the redesigned zookeeper uniforms at his side.

“Ah! Blue, good of you to join us!” Gramps said, smiling as Blue slid into the chair next to him. Across sat a boy with dark brown hair, evenly lightened by hours spent out in the sun. The girl next to him could’ve been his sister, with hair a shade lighter and eyes a shade darker. “These are our newest team members, Leaf and Red. Leaf and Red, this is my grandson, Blue. He’s working as a biochemist up in Viridian.”

“Nice to meet ya,” Blue said, offering out his hand. Red shook it, and Leaf dipped her head in acknowledgement.

“Professor Oak has mentioned you quite a bit,” Leaf said. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“All good things, I hope,” Blue said.

“Hmm,” Leaf shrugged in response. The server came by moments later and took their orders before retreating back. “What brings you back to the zoo?”

“Oh. I was just in the area, figured I’d swing by. It’s been a while.”

“It has! Why, Blue, for a while I thought you might’ve been avoiding me!” Gramps grinned, holding up his glass.

The man really did not know how to go five minutes in public without alluding to their family’s difficulties, did he?

“I would never,” Blue lied.

Red blinked at that, and Blue took a moment to study their quiet companion as Gramps chattered on about the criminal time between Blue’s last visit and the one today, about how his granddaughter Daisy at least made sure to call each week.

Red was rather pretty, really. His hair looked soft and silky, shoulders broad and sturdy, and- and wow, Blue really was getting desperate.

“What do you guys work on?” Blue asked.

“The new reptile house,” Gramps answered for them. “Red’s our new resident amphibian expert and Leaf has been coordinating all the programs for the building and maintaining the snake enclosures. We just need to get Red talking to groups. He’s incredibly knowledgeable for someone so new to the field.”

Red uncomfortably shrugged, and the conversation continued without him.

Leaf honestly didn’t talk much more, Gramps steamrolling everyone as per usual. It wasn’t until their plates were cleared and the pavilion started to clear that Red spoke up.

“My car broke down,” he told Gramps, “so I’ll be staying until Leaf’s shift ends.”

Gramps laughed. “Nonsense. Blue can drive you home whenever, can’t you, Blue?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Red looked at Blue, as if just noticing him for the first time. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem. Is your shift done now?”

“In an hour. Have to clean up the treefrog tanks.”

“Can I watch?”

Red hunched his shoulders some. “Sure.”

The reptile house had been remodeled since Blue’s childhood, now featuring sharp new photography highlighting the beauty of its inhabitants decorating darkly painted walls. The enclosures were bigger, with tactful spotlights drawing attention to the exhibits without putting stress on the creatures within.

Red led Blue to the back room, where a large tank of tree frogs dominated half the middle table.

“They’re in quarantine,” Red explained. “We’ll be putting them out next week.”

Blue learned that Red was as meticulous as he was quiet, his movements slow and deliberate as he scrubbed the sides of the tank from the inside and refreshed the water and food. He took time to position his spray bottle before misting the treefrogs, as if trying to determine the best angle to hydrate them without disturbing their days.

One leapt out of the terrarium as he reached for the lid, and Red caught it out of the air before gently releasing it onto a piece of corkwood.

“You’re good at what you do,” Blue said after a moment. “I can see why Gramps likes you.”

Red looked uncomfortable under Blue’s amazed gaze, but didn’t say anything as he washed his hands.

“Ready to go?”

Red nodded.

As a pair, they walked mindlessly back to the parking lot. The heat above the asphalt hit hard, and Blue was grateful to get in his car and max out the AC.

“Are you good to navigate me to your place?” Blue asked over the loud whirring of fans. Red nodded, eyes fixed out the window. “That requires talking,” Blue warned.

“I can talk.”

“You sure about that? You’ve been pretty quiet.”

Something flashed across Red’s face, and Blue had the sudden feeling he was about to regret his words.

“Turn left on Violet Street,” Red said.

“Red, I’m not even out of the parking lot yet.”

Red smirked. “Then left onto Pine Trails, right on Gemrock, and then left onto the unnamed cul-de-sac with all the apartments.”

“Red. I’m still in the parking lot.”

“Good luck.”

Blue stared at him for a moment. “Gramps actually likes you because you’re a shithead, doesn’t he?”

Red shrugged.

“Fuck, okay.” Blue turned down the AC a tad and turned on the radio, static crackling louder than the music. He maneuvered out of the parking lot and onto the street. “Okay. Left on Violet Street, right?”

“Not right, left,” Red said.

“Fuck you, okay,” Blue said, taking the turn a little sharper than necessary. “Left on Pinewood?”

“Is that what I said?”

“Is it?”

“I dunno, I don’t think I said anything since I can’t talk.”

Blue sighed. “Dude. I’m driving you home.”

“Can you drive?”

“God. Okay. Left on Pinewood it is.”

“Wrong move.”

“Shit.”

“Pine Trails.”

“I can still get to Gemrock from here, though, right?”

Red was silent, and Blue quickly learned he could not. Growling as he made a u-turn, Red relaxed in his seat, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Blue fumbles about, half-lost in his own hometown, before finding the legendary Gemrock street and driving up the hill.

“I talk,” Red said as he gets out. “You just didn’t listen.”

**-line break-**

Blue tries to visit his grandfather a little more frequently. Well, actually, he goes on a date that goes nowhere a month later, and both parties leaving unsatisfied, Blue decided to just drive the extra hour down to the zoo. He wondered why everyone his friends set him up with lived in fucking Pallet Town. Was everyone in Viridian already paired off? Really?

Red’s there again, in the office next to Gramps’s, and Blue gives him a brief salute. Red looks up from his computer, eyebrows raised.

“I thought you only visited once a year,” Red said.

“I’m not that horrible of a grandson,” Blue said. “Jeez. Is that how he talks about me?”

Red shrugged.

Blue ate lunch with his grandfather, a rather painful experience involving lots of breathing exercises Daisy had lectured him on for hours in college, and by the time they made their way back up to the admin building Blue wanted to punch something.

Instead, he walked into Red’s office.

“What’re you doing tonight?” Blue asked.

Red shrugged.

“I’ll buy you dinner. Meet me at The Fix at seven.”

And if Blue took a bit of extra pleasure in the shocked look on Red’s face, well, what did it matter?

**-line break-**

Red’s a vegetarian, of course, Blue should’ve realized the guy working at a zoo would be averse to meat. Not that it ever deterred Gramps. Or Blue.

But The Fix had veggie burgers too, and Red didn’t complain about it.

“So,” Blue said, “zoos.”

“Zoos,” Red agreed.

“I pretty much lived there when I was a kid,” Blue said. “Gramps was always working and couldn’t leave me and Daisy at home, so he’d dump us off in what’s now your office to do our homework or whatever or ditch us with a tour guide for the afternoon. Eventually Daisy was old enough to look after me and we were allowed to roam around wherever.”

“I didn’t go to the zoo until I was in high school,” Red said.

“That’s unusual for a zookeeper.”

Red shrugged. “I like frogs.”

Blue discovered how much Red did like frogs when Red invited him over afterwards, and after Blue spent the entire drive over marveling at how the one successful date he had was with someone his _grandfather_ had introduced him to and who was somehow even more of an asshole than Blue, Blue realized that of course the other shoe had to drop.

Inside Red’s bedroom were no less than three terrariums that took up the entire wall, each with different species of frogs. His bookshelf was filled with books about frogs. His living room had rejected frog portraits leftover from the reptile house remodeling.

What the hell.

“Frogs,” Blue said dumbly, standing in the threshold of Blue’s room.

Red looked around, as if noticing the frog décor for the first time. “Oh. I mean, I told you. I like frogs.”

“Uh…” Blue said, rubbing his neck awkwardly, “do you like anything else?”

Red shrugged. “You seem pretty alright.” He paused. “Is this… okay?”

Blue shrugged back. “It’s a lot of frogs.”

“I didn’t buy most of this,” Red said, slightly defensively. “I just got the frogs, and they were originally in the living room. But the bedroom stays warmer, so they moved in here. People just… buy me frog things. I guess because they don’t know what else to buy. So it’s either keep it or toss it, and tossing it seems rude.”

Blue hummed. “I guess that makes sense.”

“…Do you want to learn about my frogs?”

Blue blinked and thought about all his failed dates in the past year.

“Fuck it. Sure. Fine.”

Red’s face lit up almost immediately, and Blue found himself almost interested in the piles of frog facts Red shared, going so far as to pull an Australian White’s Tree Frog out of its enclosure and show Blue how to hold it.

“How’d you get into frogs?” Blue asked after a while. Frog barely even sounded like a word at this point.

“I dunno. Just liked them since I was little.”

“Neat.”

“Yeah.”

Outside, it had begun to hail, and Blue sighed as he checked his watch.

“It’s pretty late,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I guess it’s either I stay here or my grandfather’s place.”

Red shifted a bit. “You can stay if you want.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. If you’re okay with, you know. The frogs.”

Blue hummed. “Frogs are cool.”

Red smiled.

Blue was actually a little creeped out by the poison dart frog portrait that stared him down as he set himself up on the living room couch, but Red didn’t need to know that.

**-line break-**

Their next date was to a pond full of mosquitoes and pissed-off red-winged blackbirds, and Blue could feel his face itching within minutes after their arrival. Red smelled strongly of bug spray and likely had a can in the car, but Blue was too proud to ask at this point.

“Should start in about ten minutes,” Red said, face turning up to the sky. Blue nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets to stop himself from scratching at the already forming bug bites on his legs. The night was beautiful, and so was Red, and sure they were out talking about frogs again, but it wasn’t like Blue had roughly three binders full of Pokémon trading cards he still refused to sell and a closet full of old game consoles he dumped countless hours into refurbishing.

He could handle an apartment full of frog décor.

Besides, Red’s passion and understanding for the flabby little creatures was nothing short of astounding, really. Blue grew up around zookeepers, and the kind of practical knowledge that Red just carried with him normally took people years in industry to acquire. His excitement about something so seemingly mundane honestly excited Blue, too, and he found himself looking forward to hearing whatever Red had to share tonight.

Except Red stayed silent, and the chorus of ribbits and croaks filled the space instead. It went on for about half an hour, and Blue could occasionally see a frog emerge from the cattails and hop onto a lilypad, a perfect picture of tranquility.

Once they quieted down, Red guided Blue back to the car in the dark, and Blue could practically feel his smirk as Blue tripped and fell against Red’s chest. Blue quickly tried to shove himself off, but Red was faster, and Blue found himself trapped in a warm embrace.

“You smell like citrus,” Blue muttered against Red’s shirt.

“It’s the bugspray.”

“No kidding.”

“Thanks for coming out with me.”

“It was neat. What kind of frogs were those?”

“Bullfrogs.”

“That’s it?”

“What?”

“No fun facts or speech about them?”

“Did you want one?”

“…If you want to give one. But this is fine too. Though I’d like to leave before I get eaten alive by the mosquitoes.”

Red pushed him away, hands firm on his shoulders. “Looks like it’s too late for that,” he quipped. Blue half-heartedly punched them and they drove off.

Well, Red tried to, but Blue distracted him and they found themselves pulled over not too far away, making out in the backseat of Red’s recently-fixed beat-up mini-SUV.

**-line break-**

A year later, Blue got a better job offer closer to Pallet, which he didn’t mind. Red also “ran the numbers” and said it’d be cheaper for them to live together, which he really didn’t mind. The frogs moved out of Red’s bedroom and into their shared living room, which Blue was exceedingly okay with. The frog décor was spread about and mixed with the evidence of Blue’s own hobbies, tying together into a weird mix that seemed extremely them but not overwhelmingly intense. The poison dart frog portrait that stared Blue down his first night at Red’s still unnerved Blue a bit from its new position next to the TV, but it was fine.

And now he and Red shared a bed and their mornings and evenings and weekends, which was pretty much all Blue could’ve wanted out of the relationship.

The only thing that sucked was the smug look on is grandfather’s face every week he visited him at the zoo.

**Author's Note:**

> there is no ongoing theme or thought in this other than red likes frogs
> 
> also sorry i'm too lazy to give red and leaf's moms names. i like thought about the unspoken implications of that for about three minutes and about how moms are people outside their momliness and it's important that we all recognize that and media has a lot of influence over how we think about things but my creations probably don't because it's mindless fanfiction and i don't know why i'm talking about this but like. in this fic red's mom's role is just being red's mom. and i didn't know what to name her. maybe delia? whatever. it's fanfiction. i'm not perfect. why am i talking about this still. you should all value your mothers as people in addition to being mothers. there's essays on this somewhere probably.
> 
> the point is i like frogs
> 
> and i am sorry for everything that's just half ass touched on here that adds up to literally nothing i just. frogs.  
> my dream is to literally one day hold a frog.


End file.
